Site-based Management Research Articles

High School Advisory Programs: The Roosevelt Roads Experience

ncreasingly, high school educators are reaching down to middle schools for concepts to use in their school restructuring efforts.' That is what the Restructuring Team at Roosevelt Roads High School, a Department of Defense dependent school in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, did in 1996. As part of the site-based management in effect at that school, the team initiated an advisory program (also known as advisor-advisee or home-based guidance programs), established interdisciplinary teaming, and took steps to create a positive school climate (or sense of community [Manning and Saddlemire 1996a, 1996b]). This use of middle school concepts on the high school level has resulted in widespread restructuring at Roosevelt Roads High School. In this article, we focus on one component of the restructuring-the advisory program. We define the advisory program, explain its implementation, discuss the evolving scope and sequence, and offer suggestions for high school educators wanting to implement such a program.

School Climate, School Improvement and Site-based Management

This article examines the relationship between school organisational climate and the school's preparedness to undertake restructuring and improvement. Over the last two decades, much research into school improvement and effectiveness has indicated the importance of school climate for a school's efforts to change. For school-level personnel, an understanding of the nature of the prevailing climate would seem valuable in determining the school's willingness and capacity to embark on school improvement initiatives and to evaluate the impact that such initiatives have on the nature of the school's climate. The research reported here was conducted in three phases. The first phase involved the assessment of the prevailing organisational climate in 30 secondary schools drawn from three State education systems in Australia. The second phase involved analysing and documenting the principles and school-level process associated with the establishment of site-based management in the three State education systems. The third phase sought teachers' perceptions about the impact of site-based management on school improvement planning, collaboration and curriculum leadership, and classroom practices. The research indicated the existence of an important relationship between organisational climate and the school's capacity to implement and sustain authentic site-based management. Where the prevailing organisational climate is negative, tailored ‘front-end’ strategies designed to improve the climate might be undertaken prior to the school embarking on substantial school improvement initiatives. Finally, assessing organisational climate can provide information about a school's preparedness to undertake change, and a re-assessment of climate following a change initiative can provide evaluative data about the extent of change within the school.

New schools for a new century: the redesign of urban education

In this book, distinguished scholars discuss recent controversial innovations - charter schools, contracting arrangements, and choice - designed to liberate educators from burdensome bureaucratic controls and raise the level of opportunity for children. The authors focus on the problems in cities, where far too many children have been denied access to quality institutions. Various essays explore the lessons to be learned from Catholic schools, site-based management, and private entrepreneurs, as well as specific developments in three cities - New York, Milwaukee, and Chicago. The contributors, though realistic about the political and institutional obstacles that stand in the way of meaningful change, foresee the demise of the size fits all approach to schooling. They envision a system of schools that is dynamic, diverse, performance-based, and accountable - one that is supportive of professionals, responsive to creativity, intolerant of failure, and committed to high educational standards for children.

The Educational Accountability of Schools in England and Wales

This article reviews the requirements of English and Welsh schools to ensure accountability to stakeholders within the education system. It is argued that although there are many demands for accountability, few of them are rigorously imposed. The most powerful accountabilities operate through the educational "marketplace " that has been created by the introduction of site-based management and open enrollment. Although many of these accountabilities are not directly imposed, they have had a major impact on educational aims, practices, and values.

Time, Money, and the Control of One's Own Work Life: An Examination of the Deferred Salary Leave Plan

This article describes a contractually negotiated income leisure substitution provision commonly used in Canada but relatively unknown to school districts in the United States. Known as the deferred salary leave plan, this personnel policy enables teachers to assume greater control over their own work lives by allowing them to set aside monies to underwrite their own leaves of absence. After first examining this policy innovation, the authors argue that opportunities for income/leisure substitutions such as the deferred salary leave plan may help teachers alleviate job stress, offset the increased work demands of reform initiatives such as site-based management and shared decision making, and cause educational policy makers to reconsider common but rather narrow conceptions of staff development.

Restructuring Education: Lessons from Chicago, Edmonton, and Wellington

igger is better, or so we were told. Yet, the consolidation of small school boards into larger units, the panacea of the 1960s and 1970s, has become a bureaucratic nightmare. Many systems, in both Canada and the United States, are top heavy. For example, in Ontario, about forty cents of every education dollar goes to sustain nonschool-site activities. Meanwhile, teachers and students hold bake sales, sell chocolate bars, and wash cars to finance field trips. Clearly, we have lost our way. Educators in other countries, particularly Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand, have come to the same conclusion. The solution is to restructure, at least according to the experts (many of whom, incidentally, are responsible for the present mess). Restructuring is an amorphous concept because it includes anything that has to do with present structures. It is sometimes referred to as systematic change because it involves changing the system of rules, roles, and relationships that determine how people, space, time, knowledge, and technology are used. Ideally, of course, restructuring begins by unstructuring-that is taking away the familiar ways of doing things so that new ideas are not just dumped on top of old ones. Restructuring can occur at either the school or district (board) level, or both. School-level restructuring might include changes in teaching methods, curricular materials, and/or assessment procedures. In contrast, district-level restructuring focuses on decentralizing decision making. Decisions about role definitions, resource allocation, and personnel deployment are given to the schools. A central authority still retains control over the aims of education, but the means are left to individual schools. This tight-onobjectives-but-loose-on-approach structure is called, among other things, school-based management, site-based management, or, simply, local management.

Deconstructing Site-Based Management: Possibilities for Emancipation and Alternative Means of Control

Deconstructing Site-Based Management: Possibilities for Emancipation and Alternative Means of Control

Quality through Site-Based Scheduling

Site-based management and the middle school concept have been linked together as middle level educators strive to provide for the unique social, emotional, intellectu al, and physical needs of young adolescents (Lyons & Shelton, 1994). The supposition is that the best decisions are made by those individuals closest to the implementation of the decision (Hill & Bonan, 1991). Two reasons are commonly sited in sup port of site-based management: (a) decisions should be made at the closest level possible to implementation, typically the school; and (b) participation in the change process is necessary to making successful decisions (Lyons & Shelton, 1994). There are several site-based management models, and, although they may differ slightly, all include deter mining needs and assigning resources (David, 1989). Van Meter (1991) mentions the school schedule as being within the realm of site-based decision making. George and Alexander (1993) recognized that Few [middle] schools can overcome the barriers of ineffective sched ules...(p. 365). Yet they pointed out a caveat: ...the scheduling process has probably received less attention from research and development than any other item(p. 407). One way to bridge the gap from ineffective and inflexible to successful and evolving is through imple mentation of a site-based scheduling model.

Merging Site-Based Management with Middle School Development

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn C. LundtJohn C. Lundt teaches at the University of Montana, Missoula.Terry VanderpanTerry Vanderpan is the Principal of Hellgate Middle School, Missoula, Montana.

The Teacher's Role in Site-Based Management

(1995). The Teacher's Role in Site-Based Management. Kappa Delta Pi Record: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 2-5.

Process Consultation and Organization Development Today

Compared to 20 years ago, organization development (OD) today has more applications and is more widely accepted in schools. Contemporary consultants tend to be employed by school districts and to use process consultation with teams, staffs, and stakeholders engaged in curriculum change, staff development, and organizational restructuring. OD designs and techniques will continue to flourish as more value is placed on participatory site-based management and stakeholder involvement in the schools worldwide.

Constraining and Facilitating Aspects of Site-Based Management in Urban Schools

Constraining and Facilitating Aspects of Site-Based Management in Urban Schools

Site-based management

article Free AccessSite-based management: saving our schools Author: David G. Moursund View Profile Authors Info & Claims Communications of the ACMVolume 38Issue 6June 1995 pp 15–17https://doi.org/10.1145/203241.203243Published:01 June 1995Publication History 2citation430DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations2Total Downloads430Last 12 Months11Last 6 weeks5 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

Marketing, Parental Choice and Strategic Planning; an Opportunity or Dilemma for UK Schools?

Site-based management, rarental choice, and accountability for the efficient, effective, and economic use of public resources in England and Wales were key themes of the 1988 Education Reform Act. The 1993 Education Act opened the way for greater choice in the marketplace by encouraging specialization and/or selection by aptitude/ability in existing new schools. As a result of the 1993 Education Act, schools will now have to make long-term strategic marketing choices. This paper attempts to answer the following questions: (1) As schools in England and Wales face the realities of a second, and potentially radical wave of market forces, will they advertise and sell an increasingly parent-determined product to attract resources in order to survive? (2) Or will schools adopt a philosophy of societal marketing, with a client rather than product focus that will integrate their strategic planning and marketing? The paper briefly considers some of the dilemmas that parental choice presents to a decentralized education service. It suggests a role for marketing theory in exploring the needs and perceptions of parents, and then describes a possible role for strategic educational marketing planning as a means of informing professional judgment and educating parental choice. Preliminary findings of the Parent and School Choice Interaction Study (1993) suggest that schools continue to respond to choice and competition by increasing their focus on promotional activities. Unless schools actively develop a marketing approach that shapes a coherent program of change and educates client perceptions of need, they will increasingly be driven by a middle-class planning agenda, which will further sharpen the divisions within British society. Contains 24 references. (LMI) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************

Thoughts on Program Equity: Productivity and Incentives for Performance in Education

William Clune 's case for "adequate" standards contains the following agenda: to raise and meet higher standards for student performance through combining larger compensatory expenditures with increased site-based management in disadvantaged schools. This agenda toward adequacy illuminates a general problem: the problem of productivity in educational spending. The author is skeptical that a mere infusion of money will result in proportional improvement in student performance. As long as public organizations continue to operate within the traditional model of the base budget, without developing a systematic measure of cost-benefit relations, there will be no increase in understanding how existing resources are best used to improve learning. The Clune proposal invokes the need for research focused on schools that consider how base expenditures on such factors as staffing, professional development, and curriculum can be altered to produce drastically different relationships between resources and performance.

Politics, Bureaucrats, and Schools

In a provocative analysis, Chubb and Moe (1990, 1988) argue that private schools perform better than public schools. They reason that efforts by democratic institutions and the complex environments of public schools generate greater levels of bureaucracy in public schools than in private schools. Rules, regulations, and controls restrict the autonomy of teachers and prevent them from doing what they do best - teach. Only by permitting teachers to adopt techniques free from the influence of bureaucratic meddling can schools successfully educate children. As evidence to support their argument, Chubb and Moe use the High School and Beyond data set. They present data that show private school students perform better on standardized tests and link these results to teachers' perceptions of how bureaucratic the school system is. While their primary argument focuses on the difference between public and private schools, they also contend that less bureaucratic public schools are more successful than other public schools and provide some empirical evidence for their claims in an appendix. The work of Chubb and Moe has greatly influenced administrative practices in education. Thirteen states have adopted choice programs, and many school districts are experimenting with charter schools and site-based management to reduce the size of central bureaucracies (Carnegie Foundation, 1992). This research reexamines the role of bureaucracy in the educational performance of public school students. Three reasons suggest that probing the bureaucracy/school performance nexus is worthwhile.(1) First, bureaucracy is a measurable concept. In much of the organization theory literature, specific, objective measures of bureaucracy or the level of formal bureaucracy are presented - levels of hierarchy, supervisory personnel, existence of rules, ratio of administrative to production personnel (Price, 1972, 19; Galambos, 1964; Rushing, 1967; Meyer, Scott, and Strang, 1987, 196). Chubb and Moe (1990), however, rely on subjective assessments using teachers perceptions of how bureaucratic their school system is. Perceptions are influenced by a wide range of phenomena including, perhaps, even feelings that student performance is lacking (Lan and Rainey, 1992; 16).(2) Second, bureaucracy is the instrument democracy uses to assert control over the school system. Chubb and Moe (1988; 1069) contend that democratic institutions such as the school board or other political actors establish goals for the public schools and seek compliance with those goals by creating bureaucracies to monitor the schools. Schools are no different from other organizations in this regard (Bozeman, Reed, and Scott, 1992). In the context of complex, industrial democracies, bureaucracy is a prerequisite for democratic governance (Etzioni-Halevy, 1983).(3) Bureaucracies, however, have multiple goals and surely not all such goals have negative connotations for the school system.(4) Bureaucracies are necessary to maintain the infrastructure of the school system, to tranlate academic research into techniques usable in the classroom, to provide access for all students, to provide schools a way of assessing their performance, etc. Reducing bureaucracy in such cases may actually harm organizational performance. Third, bureaucracy, especially government bureaucracy with its normative connotations, has become the universal scapegoat in American politics. Be it a slow down in economic productivity, an inefficiency in pollution control, an explosion in the national debt, or simply just the growth of government, bureaucracy has received much of the blame (Litan and Nordhaus, 1983; Downing, 1984; Goodsell, 1984; Niskanen, 1971; Tiebaut, 1956). The empirical support for this blame, however, has rarely matched the rhetoric, comparisons between private and public sector bureaucracies (and private schools are bureaucracies too) shows that public sector bureaucracies perform about as well as private sector bureaucracies when valid comparisons are made (Goodsell, 1994). …

Enacting Site-Based Management: A Political Utilities Analysis

This article applies Hans Weiler's conception of the “political utilities” of decentralization to case study data on a school district's decision to enact site-based management. The article argues that site-based management may have considerable political utility in crisis contexts. Quite apart from its ability to improve school performance, it may bolster the district's ability to manage conflict and maintain legitimacy. These dual utilities may be more multifaceted than the orienting perspective posits and may be encumbered by dual liabilities that make this prominent reform a precarious as well as a potent political strategy.

Earning teachers’ commitment to curriculum reform

The curriculum is one of several foci for change in the more comprehensive school restructuring initiatives currently prevalent in most developed countries. Other foci include, for example, school decisionmaking structures; empowerment of teachers, parents, and students; site-based management; instructional processes; and forms of leadership (Hallinger, Murphy, & Hausman, 1993; Murphy, 1991). Almost all of these initiatives interact (and all are of no mean consequence for what teachers do). Although curriculum reform is the theme for this journal issue, what we have to say about teacher commitment in this article

Effects of Site-Based Management on the Instructional Program

Given the apparent mixed results reported by previous studies (David, 1989; Hellinger, Murphy and Hausman, 1992; Jenni and Mauriel, 1990; Malen, Ogawa, and Kranz, 1990), this exploratory study attempted to examine the extent to which schools using a site-based management approach were engaged in decision making associated with curriculum and instruction, what roles teachers were playing, and what strategies were employed to assure the quality of the instructional program. It was conducted following a qualitative approach in order to understand respondents’ perspectives (Patton, 1990). Data were collected by means of extensive interviews with board members, district office personnel, principals, teachers, and parents from six school districts. These school districts were selected based on their reputation for having adopted a decentralized approach to school management. The findings of this study suggest that the participating schools are progressively addressing curriculum and instruction themes as they are developmentally ready. It was found that whereas schools have considerable freedom, school districts are providing “curriculum framework and guidelines” to assure an overall direction for the school district. Teachers are engaging in a variety of “non-teaching” roles as they introduce curriculum and instruction changes. Schools are using different strategies to maintain the quality of the instructional program, with staff development being the most common strategy. Needs assessment, campus planning, formative evaluation, and summative evaluation are other strategies used by these schools. Apparently, site-based management schools are making progress in addressing curriculum and instruction to meet their students’ needs; however, there is a need to study further how curriculum and instruction changes affect student academic achievement. Additionally, the impact of the changing roles of teachers on their teaching performance and on instruction should be studied.

Don't Get Stuck in the Middle: Implement Site-based Management

Iln the middle school, adolescent life is characterized by spurts of physical and mental growth, social and psychologi cal uncertainties. If adolescent energy level, intellectual effort, and psychological well being could be charted, they would resemble jagged peaks and valleys (Levy, 1988). The aforementioned behaviors are not surpris ing when you consider that in the typical middle school, entering students often con front a sudden shock. They move from a self contained classroom with one teacher and